


Daemonium noctis (Darkness in Vicbourne).

by EfrainJorge



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Alternate History, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Character Turned Into Vampire, F/M, Forbidden Love, Halloween, Horror, Human/Vampire Relationship, Older Man/Younger Woman, Original Character(s), Rape, Soulmates, Supernatural Elements, True Love, Vampire Turning, Vampires, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-25 08:36:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12527332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EfrainJorge/pseuds/EfrainJorge
Summary: On a cold November night, the mortal life of former British statesman and ruler Lord Melbourne is expected to come to an end. But in the dark and cold night a being moves that have a very strong bond with Lord Melbourne. That homicidal being will break in to change the fate of lovers ... A dark and gothic story, style Vicbourne.





	1. Guess who came to my deathbed.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A man dying in his bed, violent and terrible events in a distant place, an impossible return, and a night where dark forces will change the destiny of several lives.

It was the night of 23rd-24th November 1848, exactly after the second hour of the 24th. That year the winter had been partially advanced, and the cold was very present on the nights of that November in London and in its neighbouring regions.  
In a sumptuous country residence, Brocket Hall, its owner was agonizing. It is to say that the owner of that country mansion, near the British capital, was William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, who had been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on two occasions (for a total of almost seven years governing the country).  
The agony of Lord Melbourne had lasted for years, too many years. His public life had been quite successful, but his private life had been a cumulus of painful tragedies. As a child when he discovered that his father was not really his father, later in his adult life the painful scandal made by his wife when she fell in love with another man and left with him and then her being abandoned by his lover ... the terrible condition with who was born his only son condemning him to a life of pain, the death of his unfaithful wife and his poor son ...  
But surely the most painful tragedy, the final blow that brought him to the final stage of his life, and condemned him to a slow and unbearably painful agony, was to lose the love of his life. Lord Melbourne had been the mentor, great protector and best friend of the young Queen Victoria during the early years of her reign, and their relationship was very intense ... but the price of that relationship was that Lord Melbourne fell in love with her like never before he had done it with no other woman, not even his wife. In her, he found a reason to live and loved her desperately but in silence ... and she also fell in love with him. But Lord Melbourne thought that his impossible love would condemn Victoria to hell and destroy her reign and her own life, and so he renounced her. And it was not long before she found love again in her cousin Albert and married him.  
It had been almost 9 years since the marriage of the woman he loved with another man and more than 7 years since he ceased to be Prime Minister and therefore stopped being next to the Queen and had to move away from her. In those years his health had suffered an accelerating and terrible deterioration, undoubtedly due in large part to his black and constant depression, his painful solitude and the abandonment of the will to live. A cerebral embolism left him in poor condition and his physical and mental conditions continued to wane.  
That night Lord Melbourne lay in his bed, suffering, waiting for the arrival of death. His doctors thought there was little to do for him, except to give him some comfort in his physical suffering. They thought it was a matter of hours more than days, and Lord Melbourne's family in pain awaited the final outcome. His sister and brother had stayed close to him until late into the night and then retired to the guest bedrooms of Brocket Hall. Near Lord Melbourne stood a nurse, a middle-aged woman, a little sturdy and somewhat sweet-looking and kind, who was watching for his evolution.  
Lord Melbourne's mind was plunged into a confused dark passage between reality and fiction. He had practically lost his mind, and now both asleep and awake he had dreams and/or hallucinations in which memories of his past were mixed with fictional scenes set in his present. In these vivid and feverish scenes, he was again with his mother, his older brother, his wife and his son, all of them dead for many years ... but they were back at his side, he talked to them and listening to them, laughing with them, and sometimes arguing. But the most frequent scenes in the dreams and hallucinations of that desperate agony were with his beloved Queen Victoria. He relived the day he met Victoria at Kensington Palace, that wonderful moment when he fell in love with her at first sight, as he understood later ... their beautiful moment together at the Ball of Coronation when she sought a kiss from him, on her innocent and pure infatuation of a teenager, their amusing and emotional encounter at Dover House, their frequent horseback riding and their laughter in almost all of their encounters, the day he broke her heart at Brocket Hall, the painful day when she married and he knew that she would never be his in that life ... And he imagined that she was beside him in the bedroom, holding his hand and telling him that she loved him and that everything would turn out well, that they would leave and finally be happy together, and that she kissed him on the lips, and he would swear that he felt the touch of her lips on his, as he felt the tears running down his cheeks ...  
While this was happening in Brocket Hall, far away, in a dark, dirty alley in a slum of London (a marginal slum where working-class families and marginal beings of all kinds were living in appalling conditions) a very different scene took place ...  
It was a horrible and disturbing scene ... a man over 40 years old, tall and robust, dressed more or less elegantly, violently assaulted a girl ...  
The girl was a teenager who could not be more than 16 or 17 years old, a girl with white skin, very pale. She was of medium height and very skinny, she was almost in the bones. She had a pretty, childlike face (though her face was a little worse by the poor state of her teeth, with several teeth that she had lost through cavities and the rest looked yellowish), and despite her thinness, her body had a pretty silhouette. The girl dressed very humbly, with a cheap dress and quite old and deteriorated.  
At that moment the man had her cornered against a corner and on a pile of wooden boxes had made her bend her body so that her buttocks protruded. The man was behind her and had lifted her dress, leaving her naked and exposed the girl's body from the waist down. The man had his pants down halfway down, and he has penetrated the girl from behind ...  
The man penetrated her without compassion, quite roughly, while she cried and clutched her hands to the box on which she was lying on her stomach.  
"Please, sir, it hurts me!" exclaimed the girl in a pleading tone, between tears and her voice broken by pain.  
"Shut up, slut! ... I did not pay you for you to complain!" the man retorted angrily as he lunged with more brutality, causing the girl to scream, howling in pain, while he laughed cruelly and perversely.  
And at that moment something extraordinary happened ... a shadow moved at a speed so fast that it became almost invisible and rushed over the man. And before realizing, the man was held by that 'invisible' force, and he was projected backwards violently, beating against another wall. The man collapsed to the ground, stunned, but before another moment passed, someone lifted him off the ground, and that someone twisted his arm back so brutally that the man felt his bone creak as his shoulder was dislocated and cried out of pain. But one hand gripped his neck and barely let him breathe.  
Surprised first and horrified later, the girl turned to see how the man who had tortured and raped her, was immobilized by another man who was standing behind him. The newcomer held the bastard by the neck and by an arm that had twisted it back ...  
The girl's apparent saviour was a man more or less tall, handsome, with white skin and dark curly hair. He was dressed very smartly, perhaps a little flashy, in a dark blue jacket and a purple vest.  
The unexpected defender of the girl took a relatively small bag, closed by a knot, from a pocket of his suit, and threw it on the floor, near the girl, who was on her knees contemplating the scene with her eyes wide open, in surprise, and still tearful.  
"In that bag, there is more money than you would earn by selling your body on the street for more than a year ... Take that money and get out of the street, stop prostituting yourself, buy a farm or a small store, or educate yourself and get a decent employment, teacher or maid, or whatever ... Get a man who does not know your past and marry, or enjoy life with as many men as you want, but without having to open your legs for money ... Do what you want, but leave now, I have no time to lose," said the strange saviour of the girl.  
The girl took the bag and got to her feet, while she adjusted the dirty and broken clothes. The young woman kept the bag with the money and cried talking to the man.  
"Thank you very much sir!" exclaimed the girl, trembling with fear, cold and pain.  
"It's nothing, little girl! ... but I must warn you, if you tell someone about me or what you have seen here, unfortunately, and against my preferences and principles, I will have to find you and kill you," the man said in a sincere and threatening tone.  
And then the girl saw something terrible and abnormal in the man's face, something that suddenly appeared, and that frightened her horribly. The girl gave a shriek, an almost animal scream, and ran out in terror, hurrying away from the men in the alley.  
"Do not hurt me! ... I can pay you! ... I have a factory and I have money," the man who had mistreated the girl begged, terrified at the man who had him immobilized with extraordinary strength, and that it had already dislocated his arm, causing him great pain.  
"Thank you, 'gentle gentleman' ... pity you were not so kind to that unhappy girl ... But I'm afraid it's not money I need from you, it's something else I need," replied the girl's saviour sarcastically.  
"What thing!" cried the girl's abuser almost hysterically.  
"I need you to die," the other man replied with a sinister grin.  
Then, that so supernatural and terrifying that the girl had seen for an instant in the face of his apparent saviour reappeared in the face of the strange man, causing an infinite and unbearable panic in the other man. The stranger rushed over his victim to whom he had been immobilized by force.  
In the distance, the poor girl heard the most frightening cry of terror she would ever hear, a scream that froze her blood and erect her skin when she told (omitting part of the prostitution) the story to her grandchildren decades later ... The cry of the man who had cruelly mistreated her followed an ominous silence, and the girl with a mad fear started to run again without looking back ...  
After about three o'clock in the morning, Lord Melbourne was still in his feverish state, sleeping at times and then awakening only to be engulfed by his hallucinations, unable to distinguish when he was sleeping and dreaming or when he was awake but hallucinating. His breathing was a bit difficult, but he had been worse in the previous hours. He scarcely felt his body, a pile of bones and hides that were clearly about to cease that minimal activity that kept him tied to physical existence. To anyone, it was obvious that the visit of the grim reaper would not be long awaited.  
At a certain moment, Lord Melbourne seemed to perceive with his weakened and waning senses, movements around him. Slowly he emerged from his drowsy state and made an effort to open his eyes, and at first, he was a little dazed because apparently someone had brought a small flashlight to the head of his bed, illuminating the side of his head. When he could clear his eyes, he began to distinguish the features of the face of a man who was staring at him, with a gentle smile on his lips, a man sitting on the edge of the bed. That man was the same man who about an hour earlier had saved a teenage prostitute in a London alley ...  
Lord Melbourne studied the man's face and it seemed to him to be familiar to him, but his mind was filled with confusion (and almost dementia) in processing the information to reveal who the man was and where he knew him. Finally, a light of understanding broke through his tormented conscience and discovered the identity of the visitor, and then a gesture of great surprise and some fear covered Lord Melbourne's emaciated and aged face.  
"Byron! ... It's you, Byron! " exclaimed Lord Melbourne, his voice weak and broken by illness.  
"Hello, William ... it is a pleasure for me to see you after so long, even in these terrible circumstances," said Lord Byron in a kind, almost affectionate, and a little compassionate manner.  
Lord Melbourne was shocked for a moment, and then he smiled wryly at his feverish lips.  
"Of all the people I thought would come to my deathbed, I never thought that you would be one of them, and even less so long after your death ... surely this is another damn hallucination, or else you have come to take me with you to hell," said Lord Melbourne, amused and sad, somewhat distressed.  
"It hurts me a little that you say that William! But I also understand ... and you're right in part, I came to get you but not to take you to hell, at least not the hell you have in mind ... I came to pay my debt with you," answered Lord Byron sincerely.  
"Debt! ... What debt? " Lord Melbourne replied, bewildered and a little agitated, without ever believing that he was in the face of that ghost of his past.  
"This is not the right time to talk about it, William. We have very little time, and we must get going ... excuse me for a moment, I have to take care of my companion," said Lord Byron and he got up from the bed.  
Lord Melbourne tried to follow him with his eyes, but the light from the lamp dazzled him a little. He could sense that the ghost who appeared to be Lord Byron rake over in the darkness of a corner of the large bedroom, beside the large window that was wide open, letting in an icy wind that bothered the sick Lord Melbourne. Then he saw Lord Byron walking toward the bed carrying a large lump on his shoulder. Lord Byron laid down on the bed the bundle, lay it next to Lord Melbourne ... Lord Melbourne turned to see what it was and with horror, he discovered that it was a corpse ...  
It was the man who had mistreated the girl in the alley (though that was something Lord Melbourne did not know). The man was rigid and pale, a gesture of terror frostbitten on his face. The man was naked ...  
Lord Melbourne shifted startled on the bed, trying to pull away with horror from the body, but his own body was very weak and barely moved a little.  
"I'm sorry, William ... I know it's very unpleasant and disturbing, but I beg you to be patient, you'll understand everything soon. If it's any consolation he was a bad man who enjoyed abusing and torturing poor girls ... but there will be time to explain everything. Now let me prepare you," said Lord Byron, and effortlessly took Lord Melbourne and pulling him up, he sat him on the bed.  
Lord Byron covered Lord Melbourne with a thick blanket and then with great ease carried him over his shoulder, trying not to be brusque. Lord Melbourne was puzzled and frightened, but the rational part of his mind continued to try to convince him that it was a nightmare or a hallucination, but everything was disturbingly physical and real.  
"I apologize for this unworthy way of transporting you, but I have no choice, but I promise you that everything will be very fast," Lord Byron said sincerely, but with a wry, mocking smile.  
Lord Byron went to another spot in the bedroom and took a bottle from a small table, then returned to the bed to spray its contents on the body of the dead man. He continued pouring the contents onto the bedroom floor, and then Lord Melbourne noticed the strong smell of a substance known to bother his sense of smell.  
With Lord Melbourne on his shoulder, Lord Byron went to the window with the lamp with which he had illuminated Lord Melbourne in one hand.  
"Do not worry about your nurse ... she's safe, unconscious in a place where they can find her in time ... Well, let the show begin," Lord Byron said, and then threw the lamp down hard on the floor, next to the bed ...  
And then it burst into flames ... the fire covered Lord Melbourne's bed voracious and devoured the body of the wicked man murdered by Lord Byron. But the fire sped through the bedroom, and Lord Byron leapt out the open window, Lord Melbourne's body on his shoulder. Lord Byron landed standing, with no apparent effort and no injury, despite the great height of the window from the ground. Then Lord Byron ran at a great speed and hid with his valuable cargo behind the trees that surrounded the mansion.  
Lord Byron changed Lord Melbourne's body and let him rest in his arms, carrying him as if he were a baby.  
"I think it is only fair that you see Brocket Hall for the last time, as you knew it," said Lord Byron, causing a disturbed Lord Melbourne to turn his head to look in the direction of the house.  
Surprised and then in horror, Lord Melbourne saw the windows of Brocket Hall light up in ghostly light, and the tongues of fire began to appear on the upper floor of the mansion. Then he saw people running through the exits of the big house, especially through the front door. The people who had fled the fire clustered in front of the mansion, some staring in horror, others struggling to fight the fire with buckets of water.  
With his heart racing, Lord Melbourne saw his sister, Emily ... she was dressed only in her nightgown and a robe (she had managed to slip into her nightgown in a hurry before fleeing), and she was barefoot in the middle of the cold of that autumn night. Emily was hysterical, shouting to her beloved brother William as she wept bereaved, and tried desperately to go back to the house to look for Lord Melbourne. But William and Emily's brother, Frederick, who was behind her, held her tightly with his arms around her waist, while Emily struggled to get away from him. Frederick, who was also in his nightclothes, cried like a child.  
Lord Melbourne felt his heartbreak as he saw the pain of his sister and brother, and tried to shout, but Lord Byron covered his mouth with one hand and then made Lord Melbourne see it in his eyes.  
"Sleep, William ... sleep," whispered Lord Byron, and his intense, hypnotic gaze made William fall asleep, unconscious.  
Lord Byron sighed, then took one last look at the dramatic scene of the burning mansion and the people around him.  
"William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, has died this evening... You belong to history now, William," Lord Byron said solemnly and sadly.  
Lord Byron left, carrying Lord Melbourne, hurrying away from the vicinity of the house, and entering the darkness of the night ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could not resist the temptation to write a Vicbourne fanfic, connected to Halloween, to celebrate one of my favorite celebrations of the year (for more than one reason). So although I have several fanfics in development, I have started this fanfic for our Halloween celebration in the fandom, although I propose myself that it be less extensive than the others. I hope all you enjoy it.


	2. Reborn in the Blood.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lord Melbourne will discover the mystery of Lord Byron and his intentions about him, as he enters the world of darkness. Then he will be reunited with Victoria but in a way that he never imagined.

Lord Melbourne awoke slowly, stunned as if awakened from a prolonged state of unconsciousness. At first he saw everything blurry around him, but finally, he managed to clear his eyesight. Then he realized that he was in a place he did not recognize, a kind of spacious living room luxuriously furnished. He noticed that he was lying on a sofa and that he was dressed in a clean nightshirt and a robe over his shirt.  
When Lord Melbourne moved his head, to his surprise he discovered that there were two totally naked women, one with white skin and dark brown hair, and the other blonde, who were apparently asleep, each in an armchair. The two women were very beautiful, with sensual and voluptuous bodies, the two had large and firm breasts.  
But Lord Melbourne's perplexity increased greatly, and he even became panic when he saw Lord Byron enter the room. The man who was supposed to be dead for more than 20 years looked young and healthy, dressed in costly but informal clothes at that time, with trousers and a waistcoat, and with sleeves rolled up, and the neck of the shirt open. Lord Byron smiled charmingly ...  
"I'm glad you woke up! ... Now we can talk and catch up, William," said Lord Byron.  
"I'm dead! ... You're dead! If I am with you, then I must be dead ... or this is a damn hallucination or a nightmare," replied Lord Melbourne confused and scared, holding with his hands to his head.  
"No, you're not dead, William ... Me neither, we're not dead, at least in the sense of how mortals understand death ... But soon a series of images will come to your mind and you will begin to understand everything, and then I will explain to you ... get ready because it is an amazing vision, I guarantee it," explained Lord Byron in a relaxed tone.  
Suddenly Lord Melbourne heard a buzzing in his ears, and he suffered a severe pain in the head. The pain passed, but then he felt dizzy and closed his eyes, and then inside his head, a series of images passed quickly, like an accelerated sequence. And Lord Melbourne began to perceive what seemed like vivid memories ...  
In those memories, Lord Byron introduced him to that same room and laid him on the sofa. Then Lord Byron did something terrifying ... he retracted his mouth and then two huge fangs appeared, and the sclera of Lord Byron's eyes became absolutely red, giving a terrifying image to his eyes as if they were full of blood. Lord Byron lowered his head and nailed his huge fangs in Lord Melbourne's neck, and in his memory Lord Melbourne relived the physical sensation he felt when Byron sucked his blood and also intense heat and a tingling spreading down his neck.  
He remembered how Lord Byron then pulled his mouth away from Lord Melbourne's neck, his fangs dripping blood. Lord Byron brought one of his own arms to his mouth and with his fangs, he bit himself briefly, and then the blood began to flow copiously through the two holes created by the fangs. Then Lord Byron forced Lord Melbourne to open the mouth and placing his arm over open mouth made a stream of blood fall inside. Blood flowed down Lord Melbourne's throat to his stomach.  
Lord Byron waited a few moments, and then taking the head of Lord Melbourne gave it a sharp turn, breaking his neck. Remembering it, Lord Melbourne felt dread as he felt himself plunging into darkness, and then a feeling that he was leaving his body for a moment, to return immediately in a violent way. Lord Melbourne had then opened his eyes abruptly, desperately searching for air like a person drowning when they managed to rescue it and get it out of the water.  
And at that moment Lord Byron had taken Lord Melbourne by the arm, and had forced him to get up, and dragged him almost to a chair where one of the two naked girls rested. With the long fingernail of an index finger Lord Byron made a small wound on the girl's neck, and at that moment Lord Melbourne felt an inexplicable and irrepressible need to bite the girl's neck. And so he did, sucking from the wound for a moment until Lord Byron brusquely pushed him away. Almost immediately Lord Melbourne fell into a state of drowsiness, and his next memory was when he woke up on the couch ...  
"Yes, everything you remember is real, it happened right here," said Lord Byron as if he were inside the mind of Lord Melbourne, seeing what he saw, "You can call it conversion, initiation, rebirth or whatever you prefer ... one of us bites to the person who wants to convert, sucking its blood and inoculating it with poison ... Then he deposits his own blood inside that person and forces it to drink it, and then kills it ... it causes it the death quickly and violently. But almost immediately the person is resurrected ... at least that seems so because the soul must return to the dead body and remain inside it. Finally, you allow the person to drink the blood of a living person ... the person falls unconscious, while the transforming force spreads inside its body like a voracious infection ... When it wakes up, the person is already one of ours."  
Lord Melbourne, bewildered, saw his own hands and then stroked his own face, as if making sure that everything was physical and real, and that he was still in his body.  
"A few hours ago you were dying in your bed in Brocket Hall ... now you've come back to life, to a better and eternal life," added Lord Byron.  
"How is it possible!" exclaimed Lord Melbourne.  
"It happened in Greece, in Missolonghi, in 1824 ... as you well know, be supposed to I died there at that moment. The official history will say that I fell ill while leading an insane attempt to organize a successful military campaign against the Ottomans during the Greek War of Independence and that my illness killed me before I could lead my army in some battle or conquer some damn Ottoman fortress ..." Lord Byron said with some bitterness in his voice to remember his brief and unsuccessful military experience, "The point is that shortly before my death, when I was already sick, I met a man ... was a kind of a bandit or a Greek guerrilla fighter fighting on his own against the Ottomans, something very usual in those time ... But this guy was different from the others, he was a very cultured and elegant man, strange and mysterious, but the most peculiar thing in him was the fear that it caused in the superstitious Greeks and the fact that I could not see him, most of the day ... they also said, that him attacked the Ottomans only at night, but then he caused great butcheries, even though most of the raids were carried out by him alone ... That man became my friend, and my conversations with him about history, politics, philosophy and literature were one of my few consolations in the middle of my pitiable situation ... But then the day of my death arrived ... and that day, that man, seeing that the fatal outcome was imminent, did it for me, the same thing that I just did for you ..."  
Lord Melbourne listened with profound astonishment and absolute attention, also with fear ...  
"After, that man explained everything to me and told me his life ... so I discovered that he had been a Greek who lived when Greece was already a province of the Roman Empire ... he was a soldier of the Roman Legions, and spent most of his life serving to Rome. Until one day he faced death, and then a woman, a mysterious woman he had met a few years before ... well, that woman turned him into what we are now you and me ... That man had a term to name that kind of being that we are, that species we are part of ... that term was 'Daemonium Noctis'," continued Lord Byron.  
"Demon of the night," replied Lord Melbourne as if he were talking to himself.  
"Exactly ... but in Central Europe they have another name for us ... they call us 'Vampires'," explained Lord Byron.  
"Vampire? ... Does not that have something to do with something Caroline wrote ... or did you write? " Lord Melbourne said still disturbed.  
"You have a good memory, William," Lord Byron said with an amused smile. "Caroline named Lord Ruthven the leading character in his immortal and charming novel "Glenarvon"... when he mentioned this, Lord Byron did it with irony and a certain bitterness, remembering the novel with which Lord Melbourne's wife, Caroline Lamb, had discredited him in front all the public opinion in Britain, portraying him as a despicable and libertine being under the fictional name of Lord Ruthven "... and naturally that scoundrel was really me ... A few years later was published a fictional story called "The Vampyre" whose protagonist was a character also named Lord Ruthven who was a vampire ... at first, there was confusion about the authorship of that brief work of fiction in prose, and many believed that I had written it ... but actually, it was written by a young writer named John William Polidori ... What an irony that in the end the real Lord Ruthven, that is, I myself, would end up a vampire ... the fate of my dark and sinister literary alter ego was premonitory to my own destiny," Lord Byron added sarcastically and a slightly sombre mood.  
Lord Melbourne had a gesture of infinite astonishment on his face, and he had remained frozen, not knowing what to do or say. Lord Byron sat on a chair, in front of Lord Melbourne.  
"Anyway that day Lord Byron died ... that man looked for a corpse to replace me conveniently. The vampires we cannot keep our original and authentic name, and less if we are famous ... You must know that we are supernatural creatures, mythological beings ... we are immortal beings, in principle, we can live for all eternity ... we have supernatural strength, we also have a supernatural speed ... our senses are extraordinary. We eat blood ..."  
Lord Byron explained in detail to Lord Melbourne the nature of his new condition, of the species of which he was now a member. Lord Melbourne listened, still thinking that it was too incredible to be true ... but surrendering more and more to the evidence of a physical reality, which could not be the product of a dream or hallucination.  
"But these girls ..." said Lord Melbourne seeing terrified to naked girls who remained unconscious "... did you kill them to feed on you?"  
"No, do not worry, they are not dead," Lord Byron reassured him, "They are my mistresses ... I seduced them and took them to bed, all very natural and legitimate ... of course, after we are in bed I use that hypnotic power that we have in our eyes to make them go into a trance, and that they allow me to feed me with their blood ... the question is you draw enough blood to feed you, but without having to cause its death. You do not necessarily have to kill a mortal to feed you on its blood if you do it, it is because you wanted to kill it, as I did with that damn bastard who abused the girl ... I showed him my fangs and then I bit him and sucked all the blood, until the last drop, to kill him ... but I personally do not kill anyone unless it deserves it. If you feed on a mortal without killing it, that person will wake weak and perhaps a little dazed, but when recovering the blood that you have sucked that person will not have serious consequences in its health."  
Lord Melbourne was silent for a few minutes, assuming the weight of reality. Then he spoke with his voice broken by emotion ...  
"My family? " Lord Melbourne asked.  
Lord Byron rose from his chair and went to another room. When he returned, he brought a newspaper in his hand and handed it to Lord Melbourne. With trembling hands, Lord Melbourne read the headline: "Former Prime Minister Lord Melbourne died in a fire at his residence in Brocket Hall."  
"I can never see them again, right?" Lord Melbourne said.  
"No ... those of our kind do not look kindly on those who jeopardize the secret of our existence ... and I guarantee you which they always lie in wait," Lord Byron replied.  
"Why? Why did you do this? " Lord Melbourne asked.  
"I destroyed your life once ..." Lord Byron replied, embarrassed and with a certain sadness, "Caroline and me hurt you and humiliated you in front the whole country ... I destroyed your family, and I moved a mother away from her son, from a child that needed much to his mother ... In my life, I caused pain and shame to many people, but what I regret most is the suffering I caused you ... You and I were friends, not exactly close friends, but we did have a friendly relationship, and despite of our political differences I considered you basically a good man, a decent and noble man ... Lust was not a good reason for what Caroline and I did ... I wanted to make up for the pain you suffered for me and give you a new chance to be happy."  
The next few days Lord Melbourne got used to his new life ... the most painful moment was when he attended his own funeral, from a distance far enough away so that no one would see him. Lord Melbourne saw with sadness the pain of his sister and his brother, and of other members of his family. But what touched him most was seeing his beloved Victoria ... the Queen insisted on going to the funeral, and Lord Melbourne saw her destroyed.  
Victoria's face was very pale and haggard, and she kept crying. Tears ran down her delicate cheeks, and her eyes were red. Dressed in black, in mourning, she tried to hold her ground although her body trembled. Until Victoria fainted and was held by her husband Albert so he would not fall to the ground. The pain was immense for Lord Melbourne to see that scene because he understood that he would not be close to her for the rest of her life and that she would never know the truth.  
The following decades Lord Melbourne lived travelling the world, most of the time in the company of Lord Byron, other times alone. In the first decades, Lord Melbourne avoided spending much time in Britain, especially in London, not to be recognized by those who had known him. In all that time, Lord Melbourne did not forget Victoria for a single day and kept informed of the details of the woman he loved while she was ageing.  
And so that day arrived ... January 22, 1901, at Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight. It was 3 o'clock in the morning when Lord Melbourne entered Victoria's bedroom and approached the bed of the woman who was dying.  
Victoria was no longer the girl Lord Melbourne had known and loved ... she was an old woman, plump and damaged by illness. Lord Melbourne, trembling with emotion, sat on the edge of the bed and gently touched Victoria's face. She opened her eyes, and with her vision clouded by cataracts she saw Lord Melbourne's face, and after a few moments, she managed to recognize him.  
"Lord M! ... It's you, Lord M! " Victoria exclaimed in her weak voice.  
"Yes, ma'am ... it's me," said Lord Melbourne affectionately and his voice cracked with emotion.  
"Lord M ... have you come for me? " Victoria asked excitedly.  
"You could say that yes ... I came because I had to see you, it was about time," he answered.  
"You look so handsome and young! You look as handsome as when we first met ..." Victoria said, moved and excited, "On the other hand I am old and fat ... now I am so ugly," added Victoria ashamed and sad.  
"It is not true! For me, you will always be the beautiful girl I met that day in Kensington ... the most beautiful woman my eyes have seen," Lord Melbourne replied crying, "You are beautiful in every inch of your body and your soul."  
"Always so flattering!" Victoria exclaimed, with a certain shadow of her former coquetry. "Lord M ... I loved you ... I always loved you. After my wedding, I understood that I could never give up my love for you, that I could never forget you ... In my difficult coexistence with Albert, I understood that you and I were made for each other, contrary to what happened with Albert. And when you died ... then I really understood that you were the love of my life ... I loved Albert, really ... but I could never love him half of what I loved you. You were really my companion, the companion of my life ... although fate made it impossible. And I always regretted not having had the opportunity to tell you, and now I do, even to your ghost or a dream in my head," Victoria added crying.  
"I always loved you Victoria ... I still do it and I will never stop doing it ... I love you my beautiful and brave girl," replied Lord Melbourne caressing Victoria's cheek with the back of his hand.  
"You never touched a part of my body that was not my hands, it feels so good ... you never kissed me, I never felt the taste of your lips," Victoria said in her weak and choked voice.  
Lord Melbourne leaned over and kissed the lips of the sick old woman, that octogenarian woman who had once been the beautiful young woman he fell madly in love. He kissed her tenderly and softly as if he were afraid of hurting her, but it was a kiss that enclosed the flames of a love that would always be passionate, though condemned ... For a few instants that seemed eternal, their lips rubbed with passion and tenderness. When he pulled away they both opened their eyes and met each other's eyes, and Victoria smiled happily.  
"I've been young and beautiful again! " Victoria exclaimed in a childish way.  
"I owed you, ma'am ... since the Coronation Ball," Lord Melbourne answered smiling.  
"If you had kissed me then, everything would have been so different ..." Victoria replied dreamily, but then her face darkened, "Lord M ... I'm scared ... I'm scared at the end," she said with fear.  
Lord Melbourne made a gesture of anguish and pain in his face but immediately made an effort to calm down.  
"There is nothing to fear, Victoria ... I am sure that in the other side life awaits you, a better life. And on the other side are all the beings that loved you and that you loved, even those you do not remember ... your mother, your father, Baroness Lehzen, Dash, Prince Albert, your children who have already died, await you ..." Lord Melbourne replied in a soothing and affectionate tone.  
"And you! ... And you too will be? " Victoria said with anxiety and hope.  
"Of course! I will also be ..." lied Lord Melbourne with tears running down his cheeks, heartbroken.  
"Then I'll be happy meet you again! " exclaimed Victoria with touching joy.  
"Of course, Victoria ... and there will no longer be impossible loves, social conventions or political interests that condemn us to pain and loneliness, there will not be jealousy or resentment, nor shame ... there will only be love, peace and happiness," Lord Melbourne replied without stop crying.  
"Then I want to be there soon, my beloved Lord M ... my beloved William," Victoria said raising her weak hand to stroke Lord Melbourne's face.  
"My beloved Victoria ..." Lord Melbourne said kissing Victoria's hand, "Now you must sleep, you must rest my sweet girl," added Lord Melbourne.  
Lord Melbourne gave her another soft kiss on the lips and saw her eyes until she fell soundly asleep.  
A few hours later, at six-thirty in the afternoon of that day, Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland exhaled her last breath and left the world of mortals to enter the annals of history. And that night and the following nights the neighbours of the zone affirmed to have heard in the dark, strong cries, lamentations of almost bestial pain that seemed to come from the environs of the residence where the Queen passed away ...  
**_London 2017:_**  
On the runway of an airport, a man waited to stand, leaning back against a car. The man dressed very elegantly, in a suit and tie. The man who had once been William Lamb, Lord Melbourne, was waiting for someone ...  
He was waiting for the man who descended from a plane, a private jet that served rich people. The man also dressed elegantly, and came down the ladder with a firm step, smiling, as he approached Lord Melbourne ...  
"Byron ... as always is a pleasure," said Lord Melbourne with a kind smile and a little mocking.  
"The pleasure is mine, my dear William ... I made the preparations to celebrate my arrival in the city. We'll have a big party tonight in a hotel suite," Lord Byron replied cheerfully and maliciously.  
"I feared ... well, come on," Lord Melbourne replied with a sigh of resignation.  
"I can drive? " Lord Byron asked.  
"But do not go crashing the car, which less than a month ago I have it," said Lord Melbourne handing over the keys to the car.  
They both climbed into the car, a Porsche 911 of 2017, of dark grey colour, and left at high speed in the direction of the heart of London. Lord Melbourne did not suspect that only a few days later, destiny had a great surprise for him ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The data on the peculiar connection (indirect) of Lord Melbourne with vampiric literature is totally true. In 1816 Lord Melbourne's wife, Lady Caroline Lamb, published her novel "Glenarvon", as a revenge against her ex-lover Lord Byron. The central character of the novel was Lord Ruthven, that was a representation of Lord Byron from the point of view of Caroline presenting/displaying it like the worse scoundrel (there was another character who more or less seemed to represent Lord Melbourne of a way much less negative but not totally favourable). Three years later, in 1819, the writer John William Polidori published his short story "The Vampyre" which is considered the first important literary work that deals with the subject of vampires and is considered the beginning of the modern myth of vampirism (almost 80 years before the publication of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker). Polidori named the character of the vampire who starred in his story, with the same name as the character in Caroline's novel, that is, Lord Ruthven. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why there was a confusion and many thought that Lord Byron was the true author of the work. The fact is that the name was chosen by the wife of Lord Melbourne to name the character that was a very negative representation of Lord Byron also served to name the first famous vampire of literature.


	3. The Night We Met Hell.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lord Melbourne lives the eternity, him devoted to lust and other luxuries, while in his heart he continues to suffer the loss of his beloved Victoria. But a horrible and tragic event will change the course of his supernatural existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains extreme violence events, described in a very graphic way. Although this is justified by the context of the story, it can probably hurt the sensibility of some readers, especially because those events directly involve our two protagonists, Victoria and Lord Melbourne.

The scene could have made the most enthusiast libertine happy. In the vast and sumptuous suite of a luxurious hotel, naked bodies stirred, twisted and joined in sexual postures, while moans of pleasure were heard from one end of the suite to the other.  
There were at least a dozen women, all young, all very beautiful. Girls with voluptuous and sculptural bodies, big breasts, big asses. All were naked, while they took turns to give pleasure to the two men.  
At one point Lord Byron was having sex with a girl in doggy style. Meanwhile, Lord Melbourne was having sex with another girl in the Lotus sex position.  
When finishing with those girls, Lord Melbourne took another girl and laid her back on a table, and penetrated her, practising sex in the position of Legs on Shoulders. Lord Byron also took another girl and practised sex while she wrapped her legs around his waist, and Byron suspended her in the air.  
For a long time, Lord Melbourne and Lord Byron had sex with all the women, until they were exhausted, because of the strong-sex and the blood they both took from the girls with quick bites that they did on their necks (using their powers hypnotic for the girls to allow it and really did not realize what was happening).  
While Lord Byron was still having sex with a girl on a carpet on the floor (and the other women lay on the floor or on the beds, armchairs and sofas that were in the suite) Lord Melbourne took a robe and he put it on himself to cover his nakedness. Then he walked to the balcony of the suite, with a glass of whiskey in his hand, and stared at the panoramic view of the city of London at night, covered with thousands of lights. The cool night wind caressed Lord Melbourne's face and his body was only covered by the robe, but it did not bother him.  
After a few minutes, Lord Byron approached him and stood by his side. Lord Byron was also dressed only in a robe, and like Lord Melbourne, he was barefoot. The image of both men, tall and handsome, with well-built bodies and almost athletic, half-naked, could have put most of the women horny, especially if they had witnessed the sexual exploits they had just starred with so many women, so impossible for normal men ...  
"What did you think about the party, my friend? " Lord Byron asked with a wide and malicious smile.  
"Very pleasant, like all you organize, my dear Byron," Lord Melbourne replied with a mocking smile, but a little sad.  
"Do you know what it reminded me of? To that wonderful and unforgettable orgy, we organized on that little island in Italy, in the fall of 1988, to celebrate 140 years of your conversion ... What a beautiful memory! We arrived on the island in that huge yacht, with 30 beautiful women, the most beautiful I have ever known in my centuries of life, with their sculptural bodies and perfect of goddesses ... And after you and I had sex with all those women during three wonderful days with their nights ... The last day, our beautiful nymphs lay stretched on the beach, naked and exhausted ... and we were both standing, fresh as lettuce, and we bathed naked on the beach ... The scene must have been incredible for the few fishermen who managed to lean out and spy on us ... do you know that still, the locals talk about the two foreigners with 'cazzi di ferro' ... with the 'iron dick'?" Lord Byron said cheerfully and satisfied as he remembered.  
"How to forget it! It has been one of the greatest orgies that you and me have played together," answered Lord Melbourne with a wry and amused smile, but almost immediately his smile was replaced by a slightly sad and nostalgic gesture on his face, "And also forgetting It is a privilege that has been denied to our species, to those who are like us," added Lord Melbourne as he turned to see the horizon, the night landscape of London.  
Lord Byron frowned and his face showed a gesture that was a mixture of compassion and disapproval.  
"You keep thinking about her ... God, William! It has been more than 100 years since her death ... it is a long time to continue missing a woman," said Lord Byron in a critical tone of some exasperation.  
"Love ... a poet like you should understand it better, Byron," Lord Melbourne replied with a mocking tone, but without leaving the sadness.  
"This era does not need poets anymore, because love has been banished from it ... Look around you, William!" Lord Byron replied while with a gesture of his arm pointed to the entire city, "What do you see? Millions of souls hidden behind those tens of thousands of lights ... millions of simple mortals ... Most of them spend their entire lives working very hard to earn a little money to try to pay their debts at the end of the month, they barely have time for them ... in the meantime, they look for sex as a diversion, as a mechanism of evasion of grey reality of their lives ... in that, some have more luck than others ... And of course they also look for love, that illusionary fantasy they call love ... which basically consists of to fall in love and stop loving several times in their life, and each time they believe that it can be definitive love, only to realize that it was not like that after a few years and end up looking for a new partner ... And at the end of their lives, they stay with the last of that dance of partners fundamentally by discarding and for do not stay alone in old age ... Deep down they know that true love, that which lasts all eternity, only exists in fiction, in novels, movies and television ... That's the life of mortals! A grey and empty life, only bearable by the carnal pleasures and by a false illusion or utopia called 'love' ... But we are free of those chains, of that life of lies, uncertainty and suffering ... We are gods, William! Immortality is ours, we are free from death and we have centuries or millennia to enjoy the pleasures of the world without having to pay the price of the pains of body and soul ... we are above their pathetic suffering ... We own everything and slaves of nothing!" he added enthusiastically.  
"I suppose you're right, Byron. And I'm probably an imbecile for not being happy with a gift that most people would envy ... Certainly I'm stupid for not being grateful to have an eternal life, to enjoy centuries of orgies, of wild and unbridled sex with thousands of beautiful women, and live always surrounded by wealth and luxury, oblivious to disease, old age, fear, earthly problems and pain," Lord Melbourne replied with irony and scepticism, "But I can not free myself from that stupid fantasy that is the love ... the love for a woman that already exists only in my memory ... Yes, I suppose I am absurd because every day of my eternal life I remember her with nostalgia and pain ... Every day of my life I miss Victoria," added Lord Melbourne sadly.  
"This is where I should tell you that I understand your pain and that I share it, but as your friend, I think I help you more by being brutally sincere ... That's crap! You can not condemn yourself to live all eternity suffering for a woman who is just a pile of bones or ashes, worm pasture," said Lord Byron sincere.  
Lord Melbourne saw him with an angry look.  
"Do not get angry ... you know it's true! Victoria's body has rotted, her soul ... I suppose her soul must live somewhere, after having discovered from own experience that the supernatural is a reality and that supernatural beings we are not a myth. But wherever Victoria's soul is, it certainly is not in this world ... In any case, it is cruel that you condemn yourself to an eternity of suffering as if it were a God's punishment. After all, there was nothing you could do for her," said Lord Byron.  
"Yes, I know ... I could not turn a British Queen into a vampire, those of our species would not have approved. And anyway I would not have done it, get her away from her family and condemning her to this supernatural existence, without taking into account her will ... And when she died, she was too old to convert her, again it would have been contrary to the rules of our species and again I would not have done it ... I know it was inevitable, Byron ... I know that maybe it is destiny, the will of a superior force, that she and I were doomed not to be together for all eternity. Anyway, she was not for me ... But I simply can not forget her, she is too deeply rooted in my heart," Lord Melbourne responded a little depressed.  
Lord Byron put a hand on Lord Melbourne's shoulder and squeezed it in an affectionate gesture.  
"But do not worry, Byron ... you know that it's normal for me and that in the end I always manage to control sadness and isolate it in a corner of my mind," Lord Melbourne said with an almost charming smile.  
"I'll know already! I have more than 100 years enduring your whining of a little girl," Lord Byron replied in a mocking tone and both laughed, "Better let's talk about business, about the next opening."  
And both were engaged in a lively business discussion.  
A few days later, in the evening, a crowd of people gathered in the street, at the entrance of a fashionable disco in London. Sensually dressed women and well-groomed men crowded around waiting for their turn to enter the nightclub. Among them was a group of three young women and a young man. The four were chatting animatedly and laughing with a contagious joy.  
In the group, there was a young woman (she appeared to be less than 30 years old) with white skin, of short stature and quite thin, but with a sexy body and a beautiful and childlike face. The girl wore an elegant and sensual suit that ended with a long skirt to the knees and wore high-heeled sandals. The young woman had brunette hair that was long shoulder length, beautiful brown eyes and a sweet, radiant and charming smile. Many people who had lived in England from 1837 to 1850 had been surprised to see her because the girl was almost identical to Queen Victoria of that era ... The surprise would have been greater to hear as one of her friends call her ...  
"Victoria, it's over here! " exclaimed a blonde and beautiful girl, taller than the modern version of Victoria, calling her because she had gone in another direction to enter the disco.  
The surprise of a hypothetical observer from the Court of Queen Victoria would have been greater because the girl who had spoken was identical to Miss Skerrett, the personal maid of Queen Victoria.  
"I go ... I was distracted! " Victoria replied with a giggle.  
Following with the surprises for some eyes of the Court of the beginning of the reign of Victoria, the other two members of the group were practically clones of Duchess Harriet Sutherland and of the cook Charles Elmé Francatelli, and both had the same first names of those historical personages ...  
"What's up, Victoria? ... You're so excited about the happy news, that you have the head in the clouds! " Harriet exclaimed laughing.  
"Of course that's it!" Nancy replied (old Miss Skerrett) answering for Victoria while laughing happily, "You do not see that she is so happy, that she walks on the clouds! After all, not every day you will celebrate with your friends who have asked for your hand in marriage."  
Victoria laughed joyfully, excited.  
"It's not big deal, girls! It was something that sooner or later had to happen ... And now I just want to drink and dance with you, after all this is going to be one of my last nights of fun as a single girl ... I want to say goodbye to my singleness in a big way! Because later we will have to start planning everything about the wedding ... the place, my dress, your dresses, the banquet ..." Victoria said enthusiastically.  
"And she says it's not big deal! " Nancy exclaimed laughing.  
"And the Bachelorette party! Do not forget the Bachelorette party, Vicky ... it occurs to me that we could go to Spain for a few days to celebrate it ... it's the best place for a wild Bachelorette party," Harriet said excitedly.  
Charles coughed, feigning discomfort.  
"I think I'm not too excited about the idea of my girlfriend going with her friends to celebrate a Bachelorette party in Spain ... that is, I do not like to imagine my girl drinking surrounded by horny and drunk guys abroad, in between of wild nights of revelry," said Charles half seriously and half jokingly.  
"What a pity, Mr Macho! ... Because if my friends go to Spain to celebrate Vicky's Bachelorette party, I'm going with them," Nancy replied with a mocking smile but speaking seriously.  
"Yes, I know that my girlfriend will do what she pleases and that my opinion does not count, but do not be surprised if I go behind you and I spy them behind every Spanish corner," replied Charles joker.  
"We do not even know yet if we go to Spain! It is still very early and tonight all we have to do is celebrate and have fun as if the world were going to end tomorrow," Victoria replied.  
"It's a pity that Ernest could not come! That damn job with its damn work shifts," Harriet complained angrily.  
"Harriet, I think of jobs much worse than Ernest's ... simply his work shift was already programmed and he did not have time to change it," said Nancy.  
"I also wish that Ernest had come but the security of the skies of London depends on the idiot of my brother ... who was going to say it! " Victoria said mockingly, laughing.  
"But surely you would want Stanley to be here, Victoria, right? " Harriet replied.  
"Of course! But hopefully, we will have our whole lives to be together," Victoria answered.  
"And ... why the 'Mr. perfection' could not come tonight? " Charles asked trying to sound joking, but with a certain disguised disdain, which caused his girlfriend, Nancy, nudged him with dissimulation.  
"Come on, Charles! ... I thought you had overcome your prejudices about Stanley! I understand that you and Ernest have these prejudices because Ernest is my older brother and you are also like my brother, and both take care of me like their little sister ... but I think you should already know that although he is not a saint, Stanley is not a demon ... He's a good boy and he loves me," Victoria said with a sweet smile.  
Charles exchanged a meaningful look with Nancy, and anyone who knew Nancy would know from the look on her face that she shared the scepticism of her boyfriend, but she preferred to be silent out of respect for Victoria's happiness. Harriet also curled her mouth with dissimulation, in a gesture that revealed that she did not like Stanley either.  
"And just so you know, Stanley had a work meeting today outside London and that's why he was going to spend the night outside, but he'll be back tomorrow at noon," Victoria said confidently.  
"Yesterday he asked you to marry him and today he went to a work meeting outside London ... how unwise men are when organizing their agenda! " Harriet commented with a snort, "But surely last night you two had a great celebration," Harriet added with a gesture and tone of malice while winking at Victoria.  
Victoria blushed embarrassed, both by the very direct hint of Harriet and by the memories of the night of passion she had with Stanley ... Meanwhile, Charles coughed a little uncomfortable, as long as references were made to Victoria's sex life as he really I saw her as her little sister.  
Then the group of friends began to move among the people, on the edge of the dance floor. And so they came to the bar to order some drinks. While they waited to be served, Charles went to the bathroom and the girls were talking animatedly ...  
"I really thought Nancy would be the first to get married, I never thought that it would be me who ..." Victoria said cheerfully to her female friends.  
"Motherfucker! " Harriet exclaimed angrily, her face covered with a gesture of surprise and anger.  
Victoria and Nancy looked at her in amazement, and then followed the direction of her gaze to discover what she was looking at. And then Victoria's face broke down ...  
Seated at a small table in a corner of the nightclub, a man and a woman kissed passionately on the lips and caressed each other with a passion, almost as if they were in the preliminaries of the sexual act. The woman was a girl who appeared to be no more than 25 years old, of medium height, blonde and with a voluptuous body, in which highlighted huge breasts very visible in the generous neckline of her overly provocative suit, which ended in a miniskirt very short. The man was more or less tall, with white skin, with a more or less athletic body, red hair, blue eyes, and a relatively handsome face but with a certain coarse touch, and elegantly dressed. Victoria recognized him immediately because it was Stanley ...  
Victoria's face was decomposed and pale, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. Her body trembled, but very soon the surprise and pain were replaced by anger, and without thinking, she walked very quickly towards the couple.  
"Victoria, wait! " Nancy exclaimed grabbing her by the arm but Victoria broke loose from the grip of her friend's hand with a violent jerk of her arm, and went on with strong blows of the heels of her sandals, while Nancy and Harriet in anguish went behind her.  
"Son of a bitch! ... This is your work meeting! " Victoria shouted furiously when she reached the side of the table where her fiancé was with his lover.  
When Stanley heard her, he stops kissing the girl and turned to see Victoria, and his face was covered with a gesture of surprise and a certain fear, while his eyes were wide open. The girl was also surprised and nervous.  
"Son of a bitch! Bastard, liar! Is this your work meeting? " Victoria yelled furiously.  
Despite the very high volume of the music, the people closest to the corner where the discussion took place had noticed the scene and had their eyes fixed on the people they were discussing. Some people murmured among themselves and others smiled mockingly, and Stanley noticed.  
"Victoria, please, you're embarrassing me! " Stanley exclaimed nervous and irritated.  
"I am embarrassing you! ... You asked me to marry you yesterday and today I find you with this bitch ...! " Victoria replied furiously.  
"Don't call me bitch, bitch! " exclaimed the blonde standing up.  
"Why not? ... Or maybe you did not know he had a girlfriend? " Victoria asked the blonde.  
"Of course I knew it! ... I've known it since I started dating him four months ago! " replied the blonde with mocking and defiant gesture.  
"Four months! " Victoria replied, full of pain.  
"Liza, shut up! " Stanley told the blonde.  
"Let her know! ... You must know that your boyfriend has been fucking with me for four months because you are a frigid bitch who cannot satisfy him in bed! " exclaimed the blonde with a mocking, and unpleasant laugh.  
"Damn bitch! " Harriet exclaimed making a move to pounce on blonde, but Nancy held her tightly by the arm, while the blonde backed away.  
"You have been cheating me for months! ... And surely she has not been the only one! ... How you have been so bastard! Yesterday you proposed to me, and then, last night, you ... They were right! ... You're a son of a bitch! " Victoria exclaimed and slapped Stanley, and then began to punch him with her fists, but the man grabbed her tightly by the wrists and immobilized her.  
"Enough! ... Stop behaving like a damned fool! ... How dare you hit me and embarrass me in public! " Stanley yelled furiously.  
"Let go! ... Let go! You and I are finished! " Victoria cried crying but with a gesture of anger and frustration.  
"I'm not going to let you go and we're not finished! ... No one ends with me ... Nobody! Nobody dares to humiliate me! " Stanley exclaimed, his face distorted by a gesture of threatening rage.  
"Release her, damn coward! " Nancy exclaimed and she pounced on him, but he pushed her violently causing her to fall to the ground.  
"Do not get bitc ...! " Stanley said but could not finish the sentence because an accurate punch of Charles pulled him back falling to the ground.  
What came next was a chaotic scene ... Charles fistfighting with Stanley, Nancy hitting Stanley's back to help her boyfriend, Harriet fighting with the blonde who was with Stanley who tried to intervene to defend him, other people around the crowded disco that they ended up being dragged by the fight and ended up hitting each other excited by alcohol and drugs, the security team intervening to try to separate those who fought. For Victoria, the scene seemed unreal, with her mind overwhelmed by the violent and unexpected events, and then her nerves exploded ... Victoria ran out and went to the exit of the disco. She did not know what she was doing, she was not really conscious, just her mind overwhelmed with pain and anguish, was asked her to flee, to run away from the place where the life she believed so happy a while before had now been broken and turned into a nightmare. When she reached the street she took off her sandals and ran barefoot, aimlessly, while crying hysterically, walking away from the strangers who shouted to her if she was okay ...  
That same night, not far from there, another very different scene was happening ... In a huge place that had just been renovated to be a nightclub that had not yet been inaugurated, two men inspected its interior ...  
"You'll see when it's open! ... It's going to be the most fashionable club in London! ... What a good investment we made, William! " Byron said excitedly.  
"Who was going to tell me that you would end up being a businessman, Byron! " Lord Melbourne replied funny and ironic.  
"I do not believe it either, William ... but we have done very good business together in so many decades and other not so good ones ... but, we have always known how to make more and more money to finance our lifestyle," Lord Byron replied.  
"Well, I think this business will turn out well ... I admit that you had a good idea," said Lord Melbourne contemplating the lights on the ceiling on the huge dance floor.  
"Of course! Let me show you what the architect of the work spoke to me on the telephone this afternoon," Lord Byron replied and then he guided Lord Melbourne to a corner of the disco to show him certain details.  
A few minutes later, Lord Melbourne and Lord Byron were in the club's management office, talking, and it was not long before a tall, blond, beautiful and voluptuous girl, looking in a sexy and very short suit arrived at the office.  
"William, I'll introduce you to Olesya, one of our employees in the nightclub when we inaugurate it ... she is from Ukraine," Lord Byron said with a malicious look.  
"It's a pleasure, Mr William! Byron had told me that you were handsome, but I did not imagine that you would be so handsome," Olesya said flirtatiously while shaking Lord Melbourne's hand.  
"The pleasure is mine, Miss Olesya ... and he praises me, but I am not big deal. You are the one who really is very beautiful, sincerely spectacular," said Lord Melbourne charming.  
"Olesya loves to have fun ... she is a very happy girl," commented Lord Byron with ill-concealed lasciviousness.  
"It's true ... and I can call a friend to we have fun all together tonight ... or if you prefer, we can have fun all three, I would love to have a pleasant time with two handsome gentlemen," Olesya said insinuatingly, while caressing Lord Melbourne's chest with the palm of her hand above the fabric of his shirt.  
"I thank you, my dear Olesya," said Lord Melbourne taking Olesya's hand and kissing the back of her hand, "And surely if you work with us there will be time to get to know each other more intimately ... but tonight I'm not in the mood and I do not think I can give you the attention you deserve ... but I leave you in good hands, those of my friend Byron," added Lord Melbourne.  
A while later Lord Melbourne left the club and walked away. He had decided to take a walk at night to clear his mind. He did not know why, but in recent days he had had the memory of Victoria more alive in his mind, as it had not been in a long time. It was normal for him to remember her every day, but during the good seasons, he managed to make the memory not be present all the hours of the day, because if this were so, his existence would be unbearable ... But the last days the memory was present every minute of every hour, and that plunged him into deep sadness. So he decided to walk to relax, and so he went away a couple of streets from the club.  
Close enough to him, Victoria had stopped running and was walking slowly, but crying disconsolately and stunned. She walked barefoot, having lost her sandals when she took them off and ran. Her cheeks were stained by the mascara that had run with tears, and her appearance was somewhat lamentable. She went without a handbag and therefore without a cell phone, since she had left it in the disco and that is why she knew that she would have to walk back to the disco to look for them, but she still did not feel strong enough to do so, and she still did not think clearly. Without realizing it, she entered a street whose circulation was cut by fences and signs, since there were unfinished works in a part of it. Victoria kept walking like a sleepwalker, not realizing that eyes were stalking her ...  
Victoria walked a little farther when she heard noises behind her ... she turned around and saw three men who were relatively close to her. They were three men with very bad looks, dressed in a dishevelled way and appeared to be dirty ... they had very different ages and while one appeared to be close to 40 years of age, another looked between 25 and 30 years old and the other seemed to have little more than 18 years old. By their physical appearance, it was evident that they were foreigners and that was confirmed when they spoke because their language was Arabic. When Victoria saw them, she felt terror and her panic multiplied when they started running towards her ...  
Victoria screamed, a frightful howl of fear that she released with all the force of her lungs ... A couple of streets away from there Lord Melbourne stopped his walk, and he froze ...  
Victoria had the impulse to run, but the men were very fast and she saw that she could not escape ...  
"Help, help! " Victoria cried with all her strength, a heartbreaking scream in the night ...  
Lord Melbourne felt a chill run through his body, and for the first time in more than a century, he shuddered ...  
"Can not be! " Lord Melbourne mumbled paralyzed.  
The twenty-something man reached Victoria first and put his hand over her mouth to silence her, but she bit his hand.  
"Help! " Victoria shouted again when the man had to withdraw his hand, a hysterical scream, but the man gave her a brutal punch in the face that would have knocked her to the ground if the oldest of the men had not held her from behind.  
Upon hearing the last cry, Lord Melbourne felt horror overtake him and he ran off at a supernatural speed in the direction from which the scream came ...  
Victoria bled from her nose and mouth from the punch she received, and her left eye swelled immediately. She was dazed, dizzy, and had almost lost consciousness because of the brutal blow ... but she did not lose it, although she would have preferred it ...  
The three men were on top of her like hungry beasts ... they placed her on her back on the ground, and the man who had held her from behind, grabbed her arms abruptly. The youngest touch repeatedly the breasts of Victoria, while he who hit her, raised her skirt ... Victoria reacted a little and tried to kick, but the youngest man gave her a strong slap and he covered her mouth with his hand.  
Then the guy who had hit her tore off Victoria's panties, leaving her crotch naked ... the men laughed, with the obscene and horrible laughter of jackals, and spoke in their language. The man who had ripped her panties introduced his fingers inside ...  
Victoria was in shock ...  
The assailant who had used his fingers started unbuttoning his pants ... but then a 'blast' came down on him, actually a body that was going at such an incredibly fast speed that it was almost invisible. The man has violently pushed away from Victoria, bouncing violently on the ground. And then Lord Melbourne 'materialized' standing in the place where the aggressor had been ...  
Wide-eyed, Lord Melbourne saw Victoria on the floor and the other two men around her. But he had no time for the surprise, for the younger man stood up and went against him to attack him. But Lord Melbourne immobilized him with one hand easily ...  
Lord Melbourne saw the woman he loved, saw the state she was in, and knew what had happened. And his anger exploded ...  
Lord Melbourne had to outcrop his fangs and bit the young man in the neck, a brutal bite like that of a wild beast, and ripped half of his neck, a large piece of flesh with veins and arteries. Lord Melbourne spat disgustedly at the piece of human flesh, and let go of the young man, who fell to the ground with his eyes open, as he bled quickly through the large opening in what had been his throat, and died in a few moments ...  
The man who had held Victoria by the arms stood up scared, but Lord Melbourne grabbed him and threw him several meters violently ... the body of the man crashed into a street lamp, and the crack of his spine was heard as it broke, with the blow. The man fell to the ground screaming and crying ...  
Lord Melbourne walked towards the first man he had knocked down, Victoria's main aggressor, who was confounded by the blow with which he bounced to the ground. Lord Melbourne had a grotesque gesture of wild beast on his face, and a look of infinite hate ...  
With a kick, Lord Melbourne made him lie on his back and then saw his pants half unbuttoned. With rage he raised his foot and stomped on the crotch of the man, crushing his genitals, burst them ... The man gave a scream of pain, a terrible scream ...  
Then Lord Melbourne stepped on the man's right collarbone and grasped the man's right arm with his hands and pulled it hard, tearing the arm from his body. The man screamed in pain, as a pool of blood formed around him ...  
But Lord Melbourne had not finished with him ... straddling the man, Lord Melbourne put his thumbs in the man's eyes and burst them, leaving him blind ... Then he raised his right fist and unleashed a brutal punch on the man's head, and then another and another ... his fist was like a heavy hammer, like a mace, that finally blew the man's head blowing pieces of brains and blood everywhere ...  
Lord Melbourne stood up and addressed the man who had crashed against the lamppost. The man prayed for his life on his language, but Lord Melbourne put a foot on his chest and with one hand pulled his head and without difficulty ripped it from the body, beheaded him, and then threw his head to the side with disgust. The three men lay dead ...  
Lord Melbourne went fast next to Victoria ... infinitely astonished he saw the girl, who was exactly identical to the Victoria he had known, in everything except the colour of the eyes, and felt a lot of mixed feelings ... But he forced himself to control his emotions and to react because she was hurt and needed him.  
He took off his jacket and covered Victoria's body with modesty, especially when he saw that they had raised her the skirt and her intimate clothes had been removed ... He approached her and spoke ...  
"Ma'am ... can you hear me? Victoria," Lord Melbourne asked crying and with a broken voice.  
But Victoria did not react, she had wide eyes and a rictus of shock, and she seemed dead, but he knew that she was alive because he felt the breath and the heartbeat of her ...  
"Don't worry, ma'am ... I'm here, I will not leave you," Lord Melbourne said without stopping crying and taking her in his arms he carried her like a baby and went running with her at a superhuman speed, leaving behind the corpses of the criminals ...  
In the nightclub office of both, Lord Byron was having sex with Olesya ... he was behind her, with his trousers down, while she was leaning over the desk, her rise dress, and panties down ... Byron's cell phone rang with the tone he had assigned to the calls of his friend Lord Melbourne, and with some reluctance he took the phone ...  
"What happened, William? ... Did you regret it and want to join the party? " Lord Byron asked while continuing to practice sex with Olesya, who made moans of pleasure.  
But Lord Byron's face turned serious and worried, and then he came out of Olesya's inside and stepped away from her. He said a few quick words to Lord Melbourne and hung up the call. Then he used his hypnotic gaze on Olesya and ordered her to stay in the office.  
Lord Byron went quickly to the parking lot of the nightclub and watched as Lord Melbourne accommodated Victoria in the passenger seat of his Porsche. Both exchanged quick words.  
"I will keep track of the smell of blood, do not worry, I'll take care of it ... I'll also call our friends," said Lord Byron reassuringly.  
Lord Melbourne sat behind the wheel of the Porsche and he started the car, accelerating hard. While going out to the street Lord Melbourne programmed the GPS to look for the nearest hospital, because it had been decades since he had stepped on one even as a visitor. While driving recklessly, exceeding all speed limits, he turned to see Victoria, whose beautiful face was marred by the swelling of the blows and stained with blood, while she had closed her eyes to remain unconscious ...  
"Resist, ma'am! ... Please, resist, Victoria! ... I can not lose you again! " exclaimed Lord Melbourne as he took a hand off the wheel to wipe away the tears with the back of his hand.  
The Porsche cut the night like a lightning bolt ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Made with affection, compassion and respect for victims of sexual violence throughout the world.


	4. Painful Nightmares and Touching Reencounters.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the terrible and bloody event, Lord Melbourne continues to fight to save Victoria, while trying to deal with the surprise and thrill of their reunion. Meanwhile, the wheel of justice begins to roll and from the darkness, they must counteract it.

Lord Melbourne watched the man as he finished the details of his work and recalled in his mind the terrible and shocking events of that night.  
He had stopped the Porsche braking at the emergency door of the hospital and quickly got out of the car, taking Victoria out of the vehicle and carrying her in his arms like a baby, he entered with her in the hospital, leaving the car with the open doors.  
A nurse saw him enter and went out to meet him, and in a few words, Lord Melbourne explained what had happened. Quickly the medical staff came with a stretcher and Lord Melbourne gently deposited Victoria in it, with great care and concern.  
Lord Melbourne's intense gaze reflected the pain and fear he felt for what Victoria had experienced and for the condition she was in, for the consequences of what had happened on her physical and mental health. Fear and pain mixed with disbelief because she was there because the woman he had loved and who had died more than 100 years before was now alive in front of him and also had the physical appearance of a young woman, almost as young as she was when he stopped being her Prime Minister.  
The mixed feelings were reflected in such a way in the gesture of his face and in his eyes, that a nurse thought that the girl was his partner and for that she spoke him affectionately asking him to let them help the woman, assuring him with sweet words that they would take care of her, and the nurse did it because Lord Melbourne had inadvertently clung to the stretcher with one hand and with his powerful strength did not allow the medical staff to move it. He finally understood her words and released the stretcher, and the staff rushed to take her quickly to the emergency room, and Lord Melbourne could not take his eyes off Victoria as they carried her away from him, until she disappeared from sight.  
Lord Melbourne was in a state of mental confusion, feeling a sense of absolute unreality. He could not believe in the perceptions that his senses transmitted to him, the images that his eyes transmitted to him seemed like mirages, visions of a dream or a nightmare from which he could not wake up. The sounds were like distant echoes of noises that I could not understand, absurd and meaningless things. A nurse spoke to him and asked him questions, but he seemed not to listen to her or to understand her. A caretaker from the hospital had approached him and was also talking to him, apparently something about his car, but he did not seem to hear him either. After having diluted the sensation produced by the intense action, by the adrenaline, now his mind tried to process the information and it was almost impossible ... Victoria was alive, she was here, she had been the victim of a brutal and frightful attack, and now he could lose her again, as fast as he had recovered her ...  
A few minutes later he was sitting in a small hospital room, discreetly accompanied by a uniformed policeman, when two people dressed in civilian clothes arrived, a man and a woman.  
"Good night, sir ... I'm Detective Jessica Barnes and he's my partner, Detective Peter Hart, we are from Scotland Yard’s Child Abuse and Sexual Offences command ... we come to take your testimony," said the woman, a tall redhead, of 5 ' 11 feet tall and relatively thin, just over 30 years old, beautiful face and hazel eyes, her dressed in a set of pants and jacket.  
Lord Melbourne told the detectives a partially false version of the incident, hiding the part in which he had murdered the Victoria assailants.  
"So basically, these guys were sexually assaulting the girl, the girl's cries alerted you, you went running and you confronted the men and after a little fight they fled ... is that correct, sir?" Peter the detective asked (Peter was a tall man with a thick texture).  
"Yes, that's the way it was," Lord Melbourne replied calmly, but feeling anger as he recalled the images of the incident.  
"Sir ... excuse me, could you remember me your name?" Jessica said.  
"William ... William Milbanke," answered Lord Melbourne, since that was the identity he used at that time, using as his last name the maiden name of his late mother.  
"This question can be a bit unpleasant ... but when you arrived ... were any of the assailants inside the girl?" Jessica asked seriously.  
Lord Melbourne frowned and the look on his face reflected anguish, pain and rage.  
"My partner means ... were any of the assailants penetrating the young woman when you arrived?" said Peter.  
"You do not have to be so graphic, detective!" exclaimed Lord Melbourne with some anger that surprised at the pair of detectives a little, "I'm sorry, I'm a little upset about what happened ... no, when I arrived at the place none of those individuals was raping ... the girl. One of them was preparing to do it, but I prevented it," he added feeling repulsion when remembering the man who unbuttoned his pants, "Detective, the other individuals did not manage to do it?" he asked with concern addressing the female detective.  
"We do not know yet, because they have not yet done the medical tests," Jessica replied, and noticed the anguish and pain in the face of Lord Melbourne, "Mr Milbanke, this may be unpleasant, but it is necessary ... you must undergo some scientific tests."  
"To dismiss me ... although I suppose it must be very rare for a sexual assailant to take his victim to the hospital and await the arrival of the police, you can not rule out any possibility without first verifying it. It's part of the protocol, I imagine," said Lord Melbourne calmly.  
"That's right, Mr Milbanke," Jessica replied.  
"If it does not bother you, I prefer Mr William ... there's no problem, I'm at your disposal to carry out any forensic examination," replied Lord Melbourne.  
"All right, Mr William ... we'll do that test shortly. On the other hand, we will also need you to help us with what you remember, to identify the aggressors ... Could you identify them?" Jessica said.  
"Of course ... the first thing I can tell you is that they were foreigners, specifically from the Middle East," answered Lord Melbourne in a categorical way.  
The two detectives sketched a surprised gesture and exchanged a significant look that it did not go unnoticed for Lord Melbourne.  
"How can you be sure? ... Probably they were ..." Peter said, sounding a little patronizing.  
"Chinese? ... No, sir, I know how to tell apart very well the people of the Middle East from those of the Far East," replied Lord Melbourne with irony and certain anger, "For their physical aspect together with the fact that they spoke in Arabic with an accent from Syria or Iraq, I would say that I am not wrong ... and before you ask me, I know how to identify the language and the accent very well, because I have made many trips to the Middle East for business reasons, business related to antiques, real estate investments and oil ... Anyway, I do not care about their origin, there are good people and sons of bitches in all ethnic groups and countries ... If they would have been neo-Nazis, skinheads or any other white slag, or Chinese, or Hindu, or Latino, or Africans, or aristocrats of some luxurious neighbourhood, for me it would be the same ... I do not have racist prejudices or radical political ideas, detective, I simply tell you what happened, it is not my fault if casually these criminals they came from that origin," he added, serious and serene.  
The detectives exchanged a glance again.  
"Okay, Mr William ... then you can collaborate with a composite artist to make a facial composite," Jessica replied.  
A few minutes later Jessica and Peter were walking down a hallway to an elevator.  
"This is crap! We have a time bomb ... if, that guy is telling the truth ..." said Peter, disgusted and annoyed.  
"Yes, I know! All that political trash on one side and the other, and the tabloid press ... yes, it's a nightmare to be between political correctness and anger fueled from the other side, I know ... But right now I'm only worried about the poor girl who has been attacked, she is the one that deserves justice ... That's why we will treat it like any case of sexual assault, no matter who the damned authors were ... I do not care if they are aliens, we will catch those bastards," said Jessica determined and tense.  
"Yes, you're right, but we'll have the bosses breathing in our necks ... And what do you think of the alleged saviour? He's a strange guy ... judging by his reactions, it seems like he's very emotionally involved as if the girl cared a lot ... it seems like if she was his girl. But on the other hand, his serenity and security when he recalls violent aspects of the incident, it seems like if he was a ..." Peter replied.  
"A military or a cop? Yes, I also noticed it ... this man looks like a warrior, a tough guy accustomed to violence ... He does not look like a normal rich businessman, usual ... Maybe he has a past in the special forces, we will know it anyway when checking his background," answered Jessica.  
Soon after, Lord Melbourne was being examined by a forensic doctor accompanied by a nurse. The doctor was a woman in her early 50s, of medium height, a little fat and with grey hair. And the nurse was a girl between 25 and 30 years old, thin, with dark hair and white skin.  
On instructions from the doctor, Lord Melbourne had undressed and was wearing nothing but a pair of underpants of a luxury brand and his socks. The assistant of the doctor took photographs of Lord Melbourne's half-naked body to record that he had no wounds or marks on his body, especially scratches, and thus, to leave evidence that he had no probable defensive marks caused by the victim. They also took samples from under the nails of his hands and examined and left a record of the marks on the knuckles of the hand with which he hit one of the men to kill him. They also took saliva samples from Lord Melbourne to do a DNA test for possible comparisons with genetic evidence.  
"Mr William, to finish the exam ... we must check your genital area," said the doctor.  
"That ... is it necessary?" Lord Melbourne asked uncomfortable and shy.  
"Yes ... it's because of possible marks or injuries in your genital areas ... I know it's uncomfortable, but it's ..." the doctor answered.  
"It would not be possible for that part would make it ... a male staff," said Lord Melbourne embarrassed.  
The doctor reacted a little surprised.  
"Sir, I started the exam and I must finish it, I must sign the report," the doctor replied.  
Lord Melbourne resigned his underpants and when they saw his naked crotch the two women were a little shocked. The nurse made a gesture of ill-concealed lust on her face, and the doctor nudged her and saw her sternly to do her photographic work.  
Meanwhile, in another part of the city, Lord Byron was in the company of three men inside a particular enclosure ...  
Lord Byron placed large bundles of bills in the hands of two of the men, who immediately walked away from him and climbed into a large van, started the engine and left. Lord Byron sighed and approached the other man, who was standing by the door of an incinerator.  
"You had not called me for this kind of work for a while ... I thought you two had abandoned this type of 'business' " said the man next to the incinerator, a man around 60 years of age, a little obese, almost bald and with a stern face with red cheeks.  
"Blame it on your good friend, Lord Melbourne ... he organized this party," Lord Byron said shrugging and calmly, while looking on a metal stretcher the remains of the bodies of two of Victoria's three attackers, while the body of the third burned inside the incinerator.  
"Really? I thought that the one most prone to outbursts of murderous violence were you ... besides, he does not usually kill in this way. When he kills he does so much more cleanly and aseptically, even with a certain compassion for his victims sometimes," the man replied a little surprised and with some curiosity.  
"Apparently, these three sons of bitches got involved with the wrong girl ..." Lord Byron said as he took with his hands the head of the man that Lord Melbourne had decapitated and raised his arms a little to examine aloft the head, "Tonight they raped or attempted to rape a young lady, and William saved her, killing them in the process."  
"Did they? Then they deserve the death they had!" replied the man with an expression of disgust and anger on his face, and spitting on the ground with contempt, "In my times we gave special treatment to the damn rapists in jail, they are garbage, worse than cockroaches ... and those who participate in a gang rape they are the nastiest, the worst scum."  
"Well, these guy will not destroy the life of any other woman," said Lord Byron and taking the head with one hand, threw it as if it was a ball inside the crematorium, while the other man smiled mockingly, "Nobody will miss these three bastards, but if they do, they will never find even a small speck of dust from their ashes ... contemplating this grotesque image I feel inspired, I think I could write a dark and tragic poetry," he added with irony while he raising the arm, that Lord Melbourne had torn away another man before killing him.  
"No Please! I can not stand your poetry," said the other mocking man.  
"Mark ... do you remember that I can kill you in a fraction of a second without much effort?" Lord Byron said as if he meant it, but a mocking expression on his face.  
"Do it and you'll do me the favour of freeing me from my wife's wicked witch, and my ingrate children," Mark replied snorting and with a mixture of mockery and disdain.  
"In that case, I prefer to let you live so that you suffer your sentence for life," Lord Byron replied mockingly, "Now I'll have to finish with the rest of the cleaning work, I must make sure that our common friend can easily get out of this problem," he added, with some resignation.  
Far from there, in the hospital, Victoria was lying on a stretcher, dressed only in a hospital gown. She began to slowly awaken from her state of unconsciousness, slowly opening her eyes. But when she awoke completely, suddenly the violent images of the attack that she had suffered returned to her mind and at the same time she noticed that she was in a strange place ... and she suffered a panic attack and stirred violently, as if she wanted to jump off the stretcher ...  
"Easy, honey! ... It's okay, honey! You're safe ... you're in a hospital, you're safe," said the same doctor who had examined Lord Melbourne, while holding Victoria gently by the arms.  
"No no!" Victoria shouted terrified and shook violently to get rid of the hands of the doctor.  
"Okay ... it's okay, honey ... Nobody's going to hurt you ... you're in a hospital, and you're surrounded by women, look around," the doctor said in a sweet and calm voice, extending her palms in front of Victoria in a sign that everything was fine.  
Victoria looked around and saw two other women, the nurse who had participated in the examination of Lord Melbourne and Detective Jessica.  
"I'm Dr Laurie Bailey, and they are Nurse Monica Gill and Detective Jessica Barnes, from Scotland Yard ... you're safe with us, honey," said Dr Laurie.  
Victoria saw her scared and confused, and suddenly her mind began to become aware of what happened and began to cry hysterically and pout, in a heartbreaking way.  
The detective stepped back and stood in a corner to give Victoria more space and privacy. The young nurse could not help but shed a few tears and looked away, touched. The doctor looked at Victoria with a look that mixed compassion and serenity. After a couple of minutes, the doctor approached slowly and put a hand on Victoria's head, which this time she did not reject it. The doctor stroked Victoria's hair and she ended up leaning against the doctor to seek comfort while she kept crying.  
After a couple more minutes of crying, Victoria managed to articulate words.  
"They ... they attacked me!" exclaimed Victoria without ceasing to cry and making a pout, like a little girl.  
"They? ... How many were?" Detective Jessica asked, getting out of the corner and approaching.  
"Three ... there were three of them," Victoria answered trembling strongly when she remembered.  
"I understand ... They ... Did they sexually assault you?" Detective Jessica asked serious but with a calm voice.  
Victoria screamed, emitting a howl of pain and anguish. The doctor gave the detective a meaningful look as if signalling her not to press the girl.  
"I ... I do not remember well ... they tried ... they tore off my clothes and one of them ... one of them used his fingers ... My God!" Victoria cried desperately.  
"Quiet, honey ... you do not have to make an effort if you do not feel ready ... the most important thing is your well-being," said Dr Laurie, stroking her back.  
Victoria saw her and then Jessica and calmed down a bit.  
"No ... I think they did not succeed ... something happened ... there was a man and I do not know ... the images are confusing in my head, but I think there was a fight ... I think they did not succeed ... Surely they did not! True? " Victoria asked between anguished and hopeful, while with her hands she touched her body and looked down to see her crotch covered with the hospital gown ... a gesture of fear covered her face.  
"I can not say anything at this moment ... but what you say coincides with what told a witness, the man who brought you here ... apparently, that man fought with your attackers and that he scared them away ... It is very likely that the worst did not happen... but to find out, we must act quickly," answered Detective Jessica.  
"Honey, you are a smart young woman and I suspect that you are also strong ... You know that in these cases it is necessary to do a thorough examination, it is the protocol," said Dr Laurie, "It is necessary for do justice and to verify that the attack has not left sequels serious in you ... I will not lie to you, it will be difficult, it will be an invasive examination ... but we can do it in the most comfortable way possible for you, the nurse and I will be delicate and sensitive, we will go slowly and if you need we will make some breaks," added the empathetic doctor.  
"What are you going to do to me?" Victoria asked a little more calmly, but with tears running down her cheeks.  
"We must make photographs you ... of all the parts of your naked body ... We must leave evidence of the wounds and marks that you have ... We must carefully examine all your skin, to look for possible biological traces ... we must take samples, under the nails of your hands, for if you managed to scratch your attackers ... And finally, we must do a gynaecological examination ... you will understand the reason," the doctor answered.  
"Okay ... do what you have to do," Victoria replied resigned but suffering emotionally.  
The examination was a torment for Victoria, who suffered at every step of it, especially in the gynaecological part, when she trembled violently and clung with her hands to the stretcher, closing her eyes and crying while the doctor examined inside her genital area.  
While this was happening Victoria's mother had arrived at the hospital accompanied by Charles, Nancy and Harriet. Those who had lived in the Court of Queen Victoria would have taken another surprise because Victoria's mother in this life in the 21st century was identical to Baroness Lehzen, the governess of Victoria in her past life.  
After the fight in the club Victoria's group of friends had had to go to the police station, but after paying bail they had been released. But then they found out from an anguished phone call from Victoria's mother that she was in the hospital since they had called to tell her. Now the group was in the hospital, and they were joined by Victoria's older brother, Ernest, who had been her cousin in the previous life. At the end of his working day, he was alerted to what was happening by a call from his friend Charles and arrived desperate at the hospital, worried about his sister and to comfort his mother.  
Sometime later, Detective Jessica and Dr Laurie met with them in a hospital office, and Jessica explained the situation to them.  
"The information we have confirms the testimony of the man who thwarted the attack on Victoria ... and the preliminary results of the medical examination confirm that the worst did not happen, as the doctor can tell you," Jessica said in a reassuring and professional tone.  
"In fact ... the test rules out that there was a vaginal intercourse ... sorry if my language sounds abrupt ..." said Dr Laurie to see the gesture of pain and terror on the face of Victoria's mother, who did not stop crying, "... but the important thing is to know that the forced sexual relationship was not consummated, your daughter was saved from the worst part of the aggression."  
"So ... are you sure that none of those individuals achieved ...?" Victoria's mother asked.  
"Yes, ma'am, we are sure ... there is no medical evidence to the contrary," said Dr Laurie with affection.  
"Another positive news in this tragedy, is that the man who intervened to save your daughter also has an excellent memory ... he has provided us with valuable information and is working with a police composite artist to make some facial composites of the aggressors ... and our forensic scientific staff are already working on the crime scene to collect evidence ... at this time I will go to coordinate all these activities and I guarantee that these criminals will be arrested very soon," said Detective Jessica.  
"I would like to meet that man to thank him," said Victoria's mother.  
"Do not worry, I'll tell him," Jessica replied.  
"Can I see Victoria?" Victoria's mother asked.  
"She is sedated, sleeping ... she was very nervous, emotionally exhausted, and I preferred her to rest ... but I will talk to my colleagues and you will be able to stay with her tonight," said Dr Laurie.  
Sometime later, in the police station, Lord Melbourne watched as the police composite artist finished the facial composites, and in his mind, he wondered again and again how it was possible that Victoria had returned to his life in that way.  
"Then ... these are the men?" Detective Peter asked as he watched the facial composites when the composite artist finished with them.  
"Yes, I'm sure," answered Lord Melbourne.  
"Wonderful ... this will be a great help," said Peter.  
"Excuse me, detective ... but I am very worried about the young woman ... I beg you to tell me if ... if I arrived on time ... if she was not raped," asked Lord Melbourne with a voice broken by emotion.  
The detective looked at him and saw anguish and pain in his eyes and the gesture on his face, and empathized with his feelings, and also noticed that there was something hypnotic in his eyes ...  
"You can feel relieved, sir ... my partner told me from the hospital that the exams revealed that the sexual assault was not totally done ... the girl was not raped ... You can be satisfied and proud of yourself, you saved her," said Peter in a tone friendly and reassuring.  
Lord Melbourne sighed and felt a weight lift from him, that the tightness in his chest relaxed.  
Soon after, Lord Melbourne was allowed to leave, telling him that they would probably need his help again and then they would quote him.  
Lord Byron was waiting for him on the street outside the police station.  
"Well ... can you explain why you did that massacre in the style of a Tarantino movie? " Lord Byron asked curiously.  
"That girl ... the girl I saved tonight ... She's Victoria," Lord Melbourne answered, his voice broken by emotion.  
Lord Byron needed a few moments to process the information.  
"Victoria! Do you mean your Victoria? ... That of the Crown?" Lord Byron asked bewildered.  
"Yes ... it's her ... It's her body ... her face, her voice ... It's her smell, that smell that I've missed for more than 100 years," Lord Melbourne answered with tears in his eyes.  
"But, how can it be? ... Are we talking about reincarnation?" Lord Byron asked a little confused, but with a gesture of growing understanding on his face.  
"It's the only thing I can think of," said Lord Melbourne.  
An hour later, while Victoria was sleeping in her hospital bed a deep sleep induced by the sedatives, Lord Melbourne approached her bed. Slowly, he approached to see her face as of a little girl, temporarily disfigured for the bruises of blows and felt the emotion running through his body in the form of tremors and tears in his eyes. He approached his hand her and tenderly stroked Victoria's cheek, careful not to disturb her.  
"Ma'am ... you have no idea how I've missed you ... You have no idea how I suffered because of your absence," said Lord Melbourne, and then inhaled to delight in the smell of her with his supernaturally developed nose.  
Then he felt that someone was approaching the door and was going to enter the room, and he moved with his supernatural rapidity.  
Victoria's mother felt a powerful gust of cold wind and felt chills when she entered the bedroom. She felt something strange as if a strange presence had just vanished. Then she saw the window open and how the curtains were lifted by the wind, and she approached to close it.  
Several floors below, near the hospital entrance, Lord Melbourne looked up at the window from which he had descended. Walking slowly, he went into the night, shortly before dawn ...


	5. Aftermath.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria must start her life as a survivor of a horrible tragedy, with the help of her family, while a character comes into play.

Victoria was lying in her hospital bed, her eyes swollen and red from crying. At her side, her mother also had swollen eyes to cry with her daughter, while with sweet words she tried to console the bereaved Victoria.  
Mother and daughter faced that tragedy, both broken by pain, united by their love. For Victoria, everything seemed very unreal still, as if she lived a dark, anguishing and horrible nightmare. A few hours ago she felt like the luckiest woman in the world, believing that she would marry a man she loved and that he loved her, and that she would start a new life. Only a few hours later she was lying in a hospital bed, after having discovered that her fiancé was a cad scoundrel who cheated on her, after opening her eyes and understanding that their love was a lie, and living a brutal attempt of gang rape, a savage assault in which she was violently abused and was about to suffer the consummation of the sexual assault, when the irruption of a stranger caused a chaotic fight, something that it was still very confused in her mind. Victoria wanted to erase from her mind what had happened in the last hours, she would have wanted to erase the images of those dirty, obscene and grotesque men, those wild beasts that assaulted her. She would like to forget their faces and their lustful looks, over her, to forget their hands over her body touching and poking at her intimate places, forgetting the smell of their breaths and their bodies, forgetting that they stripped her and exposed her body to their sadistic looks, hurting her modesty and humiliating her without mercy ...  
Victoria was emotionally destroyed, her heart shattered, her mind plunged in an infinite despair, wanting to die to stop that grief ... Her mother's pain was as much as her own, suffering helplessly to see her daughter broken that way and unable to alleviate it and to give her peace.  
Victoria stubbornly refused to eat, but her mother insisted with patience, love and many pleas. Finally, Victoria agreed to eat a little, and when the nurse brought the tray with the food and placed it on the bed, Victoria began eating some bites very slowly, encouraged by her mother. After a while, Victoria had finally eaten little more than half the content of her hospital ration.  
Then Victoria's older brother, Ernest, entered the room for the second time that day and with a shy smile tried to hide his own pain, to comfort and encourage his sister. Victoria pouted and shed some tears when she saw him again, but made an effort not to cry again. Ernest tried to distract his sister with frivolous talk and trying to joke a little, clumsily. Victoria made an effort to smile and pretend serenity because she felt compassion for the pain of her mother and her brother.  
At one point, Victoria it got dirty little the edge of her mouth and a cheek with the sauce, of a food, and her brother Ernest extended his hand to clean it affectionately. But Victoria reacted with shock and panic, and violently pulled her brother's hand away with her own hand, hitting it almost reflexively.  
"Do not touch me!" Victoria exclaimed almost hysterical.  
Victoria's mother and brother were amazed, and after the surprise, Victoria's mother looked away and began to cry. Ernest also shed some tears and had to make an effort not to break himself.  
"Forgive me, Ernest! ... I did not want ...!" Victoria exclaimed in anguish at having hurt her brother, but could not continue because she broke again and hiding her face with her hands began to cry hysterically.  
"Easy, Victoria, nothing happens! ... Do not cry, please!" Ernest exclaimed worried and affectionate, trying to comfort her.  
"Honey, do not do this! ... Please stop crying!" Victoria's mother said extending her arms to try to hug her.  
A few minutes later Ernest was in the hallway with Charles and Harriet, while Nancy, and Victoria's mother comforted her in the room. Ernest's eyes were red from crying, while his girlfriend Harriet grabbed him by the arm and leaned her head on his shoulder, trying to comfort him.  
"I'd like to find those bastards to kill them with my own hands! ... I want to see those damned bastards dead! ... Not even killing them, they will pay for what they did to Vicky!" exclaimed Ernest making an effort not to scream.  
"I feel the same, Ernest ... but there is nothing we can do but wait for the police to catch them. Fortunately, that guy who intervened prevented the worst from happening, now we must help Victoria to recover," Charles replied.  
At that moment, Stanley, Victoria's fiancé, appeared in the hallway. Harriet saw him nervous, Charles angry and worried, and Ernest lost his head ...  
Ernest ran towards him and with a strong push threw him against the wall. Then he grabbed Stanley by the lapels of his jacket and cornered him. Charles and Harriet ran after him, and each of them tried to hold Ernest.  
"What are you doing here, you damned bastard?" Ernest asked angry and threatening.  
"I am concerned about Victoria!" Stanley exclaimed struggling to try to push away Ernest, but he pushed him hard and hit Stanley's head against the wall.  
"You have nothing to do with Victoria!" Ernest exclaimed.  
"Victoria is my fiancée and I ...!" Stanley replied, but a strong hand of Ernest closed on his neck and did not let him continue.  
"Dare to say that again, dare to say that you have some right over Victoria, and I will kill you! ... Because of you, my sister was assaulted! ... You caused all this with what you did last night!" exclaimed Ernest almost hysterically.  
"Leave it, Ernest! ... This bastard is not worth it!" Charles said trying to get Ernest away from him.  
"Charles is right, do not do a mad thing because of this dirty bastard!" Harriet cried pleadingly while holding her boyfriend's arm.  
"If you approach my sister again, you're a dead man!" Ernest threatened with rage and murderous look.  
"You can not stop me from seeing Victoria!" Stanley replied furiously.  
"Yes, he can, and I can too!" exclaimed Victoria's mother watching the group from a few steps, after leaving Victoria's bedroom, "Ernest, get away from him."  
Ernest reluctantly pulled away from him, his gaze steadily on Stanley as his mother approached Stanley.  
"Johanna, I'm sorry, I ..." Stanley said, but could not continue because Victoria's mother slapped him.  
"I never liked you ... you never cheated on me, I always knew what material you were made of. I always knew you were a bastard womanizer, vicious and macho ... God knows I tried to open the eyes to my daughter but she was blind and deceived by you, dazzled by your beautiful packaging ... even though she knew that nobody in the family approved you, that none of the people who love her trusted you, she insisted on loving you and you finally hurt her as we all expected, and what is worse, because of you, she has suffered this horrible tragedy from which she may never recover ... My sweet and fragile daughter has been damaged because of the man she thought would protect her, the rest of her life ... I know that my daughter must make her own decisions, I know that she will most likely have to talk with you at least once more in her life, she will have to hear you, and listen to your lies and your pathetic excuses. And if after all, she decides to forgive you and stay by your side, God forbid, I know I can not do anything but curse the day what she met you ... but meanwhile, while she is in that bed and the people that we really love her we try to pick up the pieces of her to put it together, we will not allow you to approach her ... We will do anything to prevent you from seeing her and one of us will always be here, and I do not care if there is a scandal in the hospital, but I imagine that you are worried about seeing your precious reputation affected ... Now, I beg you to leave, if you have some decency, and I want you to know that never ... I will never forgive you or stop hating you, whatever happens, and whether you are or not by my daughter's side," said Victoria's mother with cold anger, hatred and contempt in her gaze.  
Stanley saw her with surprise, and then with anger and shame, feeling humiliated. He saw the others with contempt, and then he turned his back on them and left.  
Then, Victoria's mother felt her legs fail and she was going to fall on her knees, but her son Ernest grabbed her, and then Harriet also helped her, while Charles went to look for a nurse.  
Meanwhile, in another part of the city, in a huge Victorian mansion, Lord Melbourne and Lord Byron were talking when the tone of the video intercom alerted them that someone was with a car in the gate that gave access to the walled property of the house. Lord Melbourne saw who was the driver of the car and smiled, and then pressed the button that triggered the opening of the gate.  
A couple of minutes later the bell rang from the main door of the mansion, and Lord Melbourne opened the door to meet a man standing in the doorway ...  
 _Anbar Province, Iraq, 2004 ..._  
The man remained tied in the chair, in that small room of a large and dilapidated old house. He was a young man, just over 25 years old, with white skin, green eyes and light brown hair. He was a tall man, 6 feet tall, and a thin. He was quite handsome, although the bruises caused by the blows and blood that covered his face made his appearance look bad at that moment. He was dressed in a military uniform for the desert, which was very dirty and deteriorated, torn at several points, and wore military boots.  
For a couple of hours, he had endured beatings and torture with electric shocks, but he knew that the worst was yet to come. The man knew when he was captured that he had no hope of getting out of that trance alive, and in his mind dazed by pain and fear he had only memories of his family, especially his mother who would be destroyed by losing her son. Now he was just trying to muster the strength to endure with dignity and courage his inevitable death and the suffering that would come before, as he watched the darkness of the night seep through the windows.  
But then something happened ... it began to hear shots and explosions ...  
In other rooms of the house, the terrorists wielded their weapons firing at barely visible figures ... almost invisible figures that moved at an extraordinary, supernatural speed, like hurricane gusts that ran amongst the terrorists. One of those figures fell on one of the terrorists and a few moments later the militiaman fell to the ground with his throat cut open, with a wound that looked like it was made with a knife. Another figure fell on another terrorist and the guerrilla fell to the ground with his neck broken and his head turned at a 180-degree angle in a grotesque way, with his face now his back.  
Another terrorist saw with horror how a figure fell on one of his companions and then his comrade fell to the ground and something that looked like a human foot in a boot fell on the terrorist's head and surprisingly the head exploded like a watermelon they would have crushed it with a mace, throwing brains and blood in all directions.  
Another terrorist was attacked by a figure and collapsed with a hole in his chest, while his heart fell to the floor next to his head. When another gust hit another terrorist, an arm of the guerrilla fighter fell to the ground, detached from the body of the guerrilla fighter who collapsed, howling in pain in a pool of blood.  
Another gunman was violently projected towards the ceiling and later fell to the ground, while one of his companions fell back on him, violently beaten by a figure, with a grenade that he tried to throw in the hand and both terrorists blow up.  
In the small room where the young man was tied to the chair he listened to the commotion with the hope that it was a rescue operation, when the door of the room burst, and a terrorist entered by the threshold of the door flying through the air, as violently pushed by an unknown force and fell to the ground unconscious.  
Then a tall, imposing man, dressed in civilian clothes, but with appropriate clothing for hiking in the desert, including military boots, walked through the threshold of the door.  
"Don't worry, Lieutenant, we came to look for you," the man said reassuringly as he approached the hostage to free him from his bonds.  
But at that moment someone leaned on the threshold and threw a grenade at the floor near the man and the hostage. Without thinking, the saviour threw himself to the ground on the grenade and with his body contained the explosion that otherwise would have killed the hostage.  
The man tied in chair saw with terror and despair how that stranger had lost his life trying to save him and then saw when the terrorist who had thrown the grenade now wielded a Kalashnikov rifle and was preparing to pepper him. He closed his eyes waiting for his end, but he heard a scream and opened them to see an unusual scene.  
Lord Byron was behind the terrorist holding him tightly while biting him in the neck. The fangs of the vampire who had once been a celebrated poet were nailed firmly in the militiaman's neck, while he sucked with a loud noise, drawing blood from the man's body. The guerrilla convulsed with his eyes white and saliva leaving his mouth, while the vampire did not stop drawing the blood, biting greedily, like a wild predator that had captured an animal of a weaker species and was devouring it. The hostage watched in horror as a man killed another by biting his neck like a scavenger bird, sucking his blood with a noise he would never forget.  
After a couple of minutes, Lord Byron extracted all the blood from the bully's body and then dropped him to the ground as if it were a waste, a piece of garbage. Blood dripped from Lord Byron's mouth and jaw in a grotesque way, as it would drip on a hyena's muzzle after a succulent banquet. The sclera of Lord Byron's eyes was absolutely red, giving a terrifying look to his eyes.  
"Dammit, Byron! ... Did you have to do it in front of the hostage?" Lord Melbourne said with a mixture of anger and irony as he got up from the floor, with his clothes very damaged by the explosion of the grenade, but without any apparent wound on his body, although beneath him was a large blood stain.  
"I had not fed for hours and you know that puts me in a bad mood!" exclaimed Lord Byron somewhat angrily, "In addition, he has the sufficient degree of access to confidential information."  
"Okay, I suppose I'll have to feed myself, too," said Lord Melbourne as he addressed the terrorist he had thrown through the door and who, upon awakening from his swoon, watched in horror as he lay on his back on the floor.  
Lord Melbourne took him by the neck and lifted him without problems, and took him out of the room while the terrorist screamed in terror. Through the shadows projected by a lamp on a wall, the hostage could see how Lord Melbourne approached his head to the neck of the militiaman and bit him as Lord Byron had done with the other terrorist.  
When he returned to the room, blood dripped from Lord Melbourne's mouth while his eyes were red like Lord Byron's.  
"Who are you two?" asked the scared hostage.  
"It's a long trip to Fallujah, Lieutenant ... We'll have plenty of time to explain it to you," said Lord Melbourne as he wiped the blood from his mouth and jaw with a handkerchief.  
 _London, at present ..._  
The man Lord Melbourne and Lord Byron had rescued so many years earlier in Iraq was standing in the doorway of Lord Melbourne's mansion, now a man just under 40 years old and dressed modishly.  
"It's been some time, Lord Melbourne," the man said with a mocking and friendly smile.  
"A few months is like a second to me, Chris ... welcome back to your home," replied Lord Melbourne with a funny smile.  
The man entered and the door closed, while away from there, in a hospital, Victoria awoke with a start after sleeping for a short time, remembering the hazel green eyes of the man who had saved her. Tears welled up in her eyes.


End file.
